A Sudden and Devastating Corruption

Hey folks, I understand it's been a while since my last post and feel I owe an explanation. Truth be told I had hoped that this month I could simply deliver you an actual video, as we rapidly approach a 1-year anniversary of the last substantial project from my channel - a sequence of events, which I'll now explain, has made it increasingly clear to me that this will not be the case.

A Search For Content

As many of you are aware, over the course of the summer I decided to take a trip with my partner across the continental United States, taking us from the Great Lakes over to the wilderness of the northwest, then through the stunning alien realm that is the southwest before heading back home. You may also know the background of why I'd made this trip - as I've explained in a few of my sporadic livestreams, the first half of the year has not been especially great for me mentally speaking. I went through what I now recognize to be a major depressive episode, something I'm still feeling the lingering effects of, and though I trapped myself in a loop of desperate attempts to produce something, anything vaguely resembling Content, it became clear this wasn't something I was going to just 'work through'. I sought mental health treatment, the first time I have ever done so, and decided a trip would help break me and my partner (who has also been struggling with depression) out of our routines. And yes, despite everything, I still managed to convince myself that this was something of a 'work trip', and maybe at the end of it I'd end up having written a full script and maybe even put together some video along my travels. 

Things did not go entirely to plan, though not in a wholly negative way. The trip itself was an amazing experience, and I say this despite winding up with 2 flat tires, a busted headlight, non-functional power steering and at least one night trapped in a ditch (our car has also accrued some battle scars, but to be perfectly honest it wasn't exactly pristine when we got it thirdhand). There were some stresses, things that had to be 'dealt with', but it was like a sustained period of pure consciousness where every day I had some new beautiful thing to uncover - it was a very special experience, and I will never ever forget it. Did I wind up with some Content? Kinda. Though I didn't end up writing out a full script during my journey as I hoped, it was an opportunity to put some thoughts together and contribute some new ones, and as I filmed my way across the country it became obvious to me that in many ways this had to be the video - these thoughts, alongside the footage I was gathering, would be the perfect anchor for the many things I'd wished to express for so many months. I returned in August not exactly as I'd imagined, but with the profound sense of vision I'd hoped for.

Further Complications

August itself, it turned out, had other plans. It began with incompetence on my part - for several days after we returned, I misplaced one of the SD cards containing the bulk of the footage, everything from California to Nevada to Utah as well as parts of Oregon and Idaho. I scoured our luggage, I scoured our car, I scoured our apartment in case I somehow pulled the thing out without remembering. I really thought I'd only used 2 cards on the trip. I was sent into another negative spiral as I realized this lapse of consideration had cost me my entire vision, a spiral furthered by inexplicable complications both from my Student Loans company (which had placed me into arrears after themselves miscommunicating the amount I needed to pay them and where to), and USCIS (who had decided key immigration documents now needed to be signed and ID-ed for on delivery, documentation I still have not received as a first attempt at delivery was made days before we arrived home). One day towards the tail-end of August, two events occurred - I found the SD card, and we had a death in the family.

Not to get in too much detail, a couple of weeks were devoted to staying with family and assisting wherever we could. The laptop I'd hoped to work from while away sustained a cracked screen, though truth be told I don't know if I was in the space or mindset to write regardless. While we're also being truthful, I'll say I appreciated a chance to touch base with loved ones my partner and I hadn't spent time with in a while. At a certain point, however, we had to head home - I needed to start my life again, and shortly on our return I set to transferring the SD card footage onto my work PC where the rest of it already sat. Thoughts took shape in the form of a concrete script (finally), and I got closer and closer to the vision I'd conjured from this experience of 2021. I started to livestream again more regularly, as a few of you were present for. There was something vaguely approaching a light at the end of this tunnel.

A few days after transferring the SD card footage to my work PC, I sustained a critical system malfunction that left the hard drive I had used for storage corrupted to the point all data was near-irretrievable - this still may be the case, as I sit waiting on the data recovery process I was led through by a very kind and patient mutual on twitter. The process is, to put it bluntly, quite slow. In fact, at 10+ hours in, the readout still claims we are barely 1% of the way through. Yes, this was also the hard drive on which I kept my Adobe Premiere Projects, and all editing I had done since returning home. No, I did not keep backups. Yes, I beat myself up about this. A lot. Truth be told I did not expect such a devastating technical issue on the device I specifically needed safe the most, particularly when said hard drive was purchased only months ago and the data transferred to it only days before. For everything I am doing, I need this - and so, I wait.

A Fundamental Disconnect

This is the part where I'm brutally honest, and confess the real reason I wrote this post - because I'm at the end of my rope, folks. As I sit here on my one remaining busted laptop, unable to write or edit or stream, wracked with anxiety on whether the months of irreplaceable footage I have accrued really is gone for good, I needed if nothing else to express the exact sequence of events that led me to this point. I post this not to ask for financial support, as you all so generously continue to offer, nor even sympathy which I'm sure most of you would be happy to provide. What I wanted was to feel I have been open and honest about my situation, and to give context for why I feel so utterly hopeless after what seems to be on the surface months of a relaxing retreat. 

I do not feel relaxed. In fact in some ways, I feel worse than ever, though I'm aware enough to recognize there have been worse stretches of this experience and recency bias is at play. On one level I feel hard done by, like some unseen force is sabotaging any attempt I make to climb out of the deep and dark hole I've found myself in. On one level, I see that I have been given nothing but opportunities, and I live my life off the backs of hundreds of strangers providing endless comfort and support. On one level, I know that I've overcomplicated this entire situation, and a perfectly sustainable audience exists that would like nothing more than me to switch on a webcam and rant about whatever happens to be on my mind. On one level, I know my ambitions go beyond that - and maybe that's the issue at heart. Maybe there is a fundamental disconnect between the me that exists in my ambitions and the me that exists in physical space, a disconnect bordering on self-sabotage as I continuously set expectations of myself I know on some level to be unreasonable. As of now I do not know what a reasonable expectation to set myself would be, just as I don't know if it is reasonable to expect this recovery process to pull anything out from such a sudden and devastating corruption. On both accounts, the hardware is unreliable and the software unstable at best. 

Conclusion

Above all I hope this post is understood, and I hope it provides answers to the well-meaning supporters who've been messaging over the past few months. I do feel better having written it, and would like to write these more. There are few things I feel comfortable promising right now, for all of the reasons I have explained. For obvious reasons, a September video (which I had announced preemptively on social media) is unlikely. But I hope to speak with you all again soon, and I truly wish the absolute best for all of you not only in your days but in your lives. Perhaps most of all, I wish that the person who exists in your ambitions matches, on some level, the person you know yourself to be.